Hackers Reveal Nasty New Car Attacks with reporter behind the wheel. New Forbs article gives credence to Michael Hastings Boston Breaks theory

This story appears in the August 12, 2013 issue of Forbes

Yes, magazines come out a week or so before the actual month.

Last Edited by Heavenly Alchemy on 07/24/2013 01:50 PM

And GL P gets it Weeks in advance!

Exactly, check out the other Michael Hastings threads, I posted an article from new scientist, that confirms.

This is an other legitimate back up to the theory many doubted.

It was just a theory, but it isn't any longer, this and the other article prove it can be done. This is for the doubters.

Last Edited by Heavenly Alchemy on 07/24/2013 01:59 PM

Always wondered why that cop with the dashcam didn't pursue when he saw hasting blow through that intersection..

$25 gadget lets hackers seize control of a car

[link to www.newscientist.com]

That looks set to change on 27 July, when Spanish engineers Javier Vázquez Vidal and Alberto Garcia Illera will give a demonstration at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. They have built a $25 device that lets them bypass security in a car's electronic control unit.

The brains of a modern car, the ECU is a computer that controls engine power, transmission and braking. Mechanics can diagnose faults by plugging a laptop into it via standard wired connectors such as the CAN bus. Alternatively, remote diagnostics and software updates can take place over a cellular network, as happens with services such as General Motors' OnStar and Mercedes-Benz's Mbrace.

Vázquez Vidal and Garcia Illera will show how their device – which they claim uses a $1 chip to break encryption – can read from and write data to the flash memory of commonly used ECUs, made by Bosch of Germany. In this way, they can get more horsepower out of a car, or tell it to burn less fuel. "And it would take no time to gain total control over a vehicle – deploying an airbag, activating the brakes, or immobilising a car at any moment," says Vázquez Vidal.

How they have done this is unclear. "My best guess is that they have managed to put the ECU into an unencrypted test state, possibly by playing around with power-up sequences," says Peter Highton, a senior engineer with Freescale Semiconductor in Aylesbury, UK, which makes ECU microchips for racing cars as well as ordinary vehicles.

Less than 50% of article included.

Last Edited by Heavenly Alchemy on 07/24/2013 02:10 PM

I know, the LoudLabs video right? The guy released a video stating that he wasn't paying attention, which even of that is the case, from the other "witness" that said the car shook his car as it passed you would think that the LoudLabs would have noticed something.

Last Edited by Heavenly Alchemy on 07/24/2013 02:11 PM

Was just going to link up to the new scientist article. Started a thread earlier. As I said then, anybody looking for foul play would do well to start at the airbags. Did the deploy?

Other thread, nothing new, just speculating.


Thread: Hastings 'Hit' theroy goes mainstream


So what was the story he was going to break that gave him the need to go underground?

Is this the new Transformers movie?

Yes that is the one.
It really doesn't add up for me but I guess I'm just a natural skeptic, especially when it involves people like hastings

Fantastic!

The weird news is that none of the car information has been released. We have no idea what deployed and what didn't yet.


The first information was that it was a story on Jill Kelly, which was probably put out there as a red herring. there are a few things circulating, but the Jill Kelly thing is hardly something you would fear for your life over.

I don't know how much they will be able to tell from the wreck, as it was a hell of a wreck but if the bags went there should be evidence, especially on a car like that that will have plenty of airbags. IF this tech is as good as the Black Hats are making out, and it's hard to say before seeing the demo I expect they wouldn't want to take any chances and would have disabled them.

A witness described the car fishtailing which could be caused by dicking about with the ESP(electronic stability program)

It is my understanding that it was a reporter who had a vehicle with the dashcam that caught hastings' car.

Here either, which is why there is a need to look into this further. Critical thinking is a good trait to have Anon.

And with you completely about things like this happening to someone like Michael Hastings.

I was doing a quick search this morning and found this great tribute to Hastings in a book review. I feel it's kind of important to remember the guy Hastings was and what was lost here:

Ana Marie Cox

A chapter on unofficial and official Washington's reaction to Michael Hastings' unmasking of former U.S. commander in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal as "The Runaway General." McChrystal resigned because Hasting's story for Rolling Stone revealed a brutally arrogant and vulgarly dismissive commander whose lack of respect for civilian leaders was intimately related to causalities in the unwinnable and eternal "war on terror."

But people in Washington didn't see the article as an exposé of a dysfunctional military. At the time, CBS reporter Lara Logan barked that Hastings "violated an 'unspoken agreement' between reporters and military officials…[he] disingenuously gained the trust of his subjects and… burned the [them] on an off-the-record agreement." And for that violation, Hastings paid a price: "Hastings was treated as a suspicious interloper," Leibovich writes. "He had few defenders."

Leibovich concludes the chapter with the announcement of Hastings' "lifetime banishment" from "The Club." His excommunication serves as tidy evidence of the access-for-self-censorship system. And it's Hastings' experience that Leibovich may think about when he shies away from speaking honestly about life in the fishbowl. He wouldn't survive, you see. He would be banished! The "good life" he built would disappear. (Hastings is the only person in This Town who comes in for such treatment; everyone else, even the relatively clout-free Bardella, bounces back from scandals with ease and, as Leibovich writes, "will always eat lunch in This Town again.")

But making an example of someone only works if the target suffers. Far from being an object lesson in how bucking the rules ends a career, Hastings went on from the McChrystal dust-up to, you know, continue to have a career—a good one. I think even a good life! He wasn't banished! Though he lived in New York and then L.A., he kept writing and breaking stories about Washington. People kept talking to him. He rebelled against the system and, until his untimely death in a car accident last month, thrived. And though being invited to cocktail parties should in no way be confused with "thriving," he also got invited to cocktail parties. I saw him at one. (Hastings was—wait for it—a friend.)

That Hastings avoided the punishment D.C. tried to mete out should scare journalists and officials more than what they imagined would have happened to him. His success gives lie to the comfortable illusion that they are somehow trapped in the system, that they are fish.

It might not be completely fair to compare what This Town had to say about Tim Russert (whose passing gives the book its subtitular funeral-cum-social event) to how the media world mourned Hastings. He was, as I said, a friend. Russert was a guy I saw on TV. But if I had to choose how my colleagues might eulogize me, I would take what people said about Hastings over what they said about Russert any day.

Tim Russert was, as the book relates, widely known to be a great guy. He remembered to ask after people's families. He loved his dad. Important people sucked up to him because he had a TV show that other important people watched. A TV show whose part in the national conversation was that of an echo chamber.

Michael Hastings was a great guy and a great reporter. He did not echo; he did not just speak truth to power, he shouted. In This Town, Leibovich whispers.

Last Edited by Heavenly Alchemy on 07/24/2013 08:45 PM

It was, and is.

Oh wow, I am a dummy, something didn't add up. Turns out I can't rub enough braincells together to keep warm.
Jesus help me

I don't know very much about the mechanics of these systems either, though from looking about a bit it looks like the information in an accident would automatically transfer to Mercedes, so they would have that info, unless there was a fire that took out that system before the crash.

I was thinking the same thing about the breaks, if he were trying to figure out a way to get them to work or get the car under some kind of control, emergency break or something of the sort.

PS thanks for the pin!

So now people will think twice about buying certain cars and sales will fall, adding to a stagnating economy.

There muat also be a way to hack the central locking system in cars as well, which is why some car locks are not in the lock postition when left overnight, giving baddies the time to play with the breaks and accelarator pedals manually to cause accidents and deaths.

Even in 2002? I'm not sure but I think if that is the case this could be blocked by somebody who knows what they are doing.

As for the brakes, ESP can automatically apply braking to selected wheels.

This touches on another issue that could get a whole thread to itself. So much on a modern car is computer driven and all routed through the ECU. Loads of cars now have inbuilt wireless or satellite devices now too so if the wireless hack mentioned in the New Scientist article turns out soundit would open up a world of options.

I live by southbend in!

Great! Give a 500ms full brake impulse to one wheel at reaching 80 mph and watch the show thru the dash cam.

They already have been, one news station had a report on the possibility of this, I can't remember which station it was but it was in the last few weeks. If someone did do something to Hastings car they must have had shares in something either than autos.

Yes, every mobile part of a newer car can be hacked including air conditioning, side mirrors and the music system.

This, together with the possible hacks revealed against airplanes gives cyberwar a whole new meaning.

The whole infrastructure is at stake.

I'm not sure if that was possible in 2002, but a few years ago when the breaks didn't work in the Mercedes that the, I think he was a sheriff was driving with his family in California, Mercedes had the information right away. You are right if someone did this they probably hacked that too.

Ahh, good to know. Though an emergency break probably wouldn't.

Last Edited by Heavenly Alchemy on 07/24/2013 03:34 PM

Even Verizon has something like this? How did people doubt these systems could be hacked?

No you could not just unhook something to disable, modern cars are chock full of immobilizers. There is a lot of complex wiring, just mind boggling unless you have advanced electronic knowledge.


'Cash for Clunkers' was clearly a conspiracy to get unhackable cars off the road.


I think Hastings was car hacked and car bombed. No way an engine would wind up out of chassis.